On the nature of tradition: The Japanese notion of furusato and a historical quest for a place

Abstract

The notion of ‘tradition' still haunts anthropological discourse as something to be addressed with great scepticism and suspicion. Anthropologists are usually among the first to highlight the supposed impetus for reification that inhabits the idea of tradition, as well as its nationalistic, ideological, or political functions. Taking as a point of departure the Japanese notion of furusato (‘hometown', ‘native place') and its interpretation as an ‘invented tradition’, this paper attempts to look beyond the surface of these kind of functionalist evaluations and invites anthropologists to consider instead the mode of being and coming to be of tradition in human worlds; in other words, not the truth about tradition but the truth of tradition. Our understanding of tradition will be enhanced – this paper proposes – if we see it not as the 'thing' transmitted, but as the horizon of intelligibility disclosed and set in motion by that which is transmitted.